E. coli is the normal bacterium that lives in your lower colon, that helps process the final stage of digestion into poop (or “doof,” as we call it – the opposite of “food”). Normally, if you were to get E.coli onto your hands and into your food, so that E.coli got into a part of the digestive tract it didn’t belong (mainly the small intestine) it would cause diarrhea, basically because the E.coli is processing the food into doof prematurely, before the nutrients and water have had the chance to be absorbed by the walls of the small intestine.
Normally the body simply takes care of this (it is hardly an uncommon situation for our species) and a day or several days of diarrhea is under normal circumstances the worst consequence of ingesting E.coli.
HOWEVER … something that is rarely (but occasionally) mentioned in news reports on E.coli outbreaks is that these serious, even fatal, E.coli outbreaks are actually the work of MUTATED E.coli that have developed in the intestines of cattle who, when in the crowded disease-spreading conditions of feedlots, spend their lives pumped full of antibiotics. (That’s what “superstrains” means.) Bacteria mutate to adapt to antibiotics, like insects do to pesticides, and when antibiotics are used not just sparingly for emergencies, but constantly and indiscrimately, powerful mutated strains can develop, and that is what has happened.
These E.coli live only in the cows’ intestines, so usually they do not get in the meat, but occasionally some fecal matter gets into the meat in the automated mass butchering process, and that is what causes the deadly E.coli outbreaks.
The vegetables that have infected people with these E.coli superstrains have been fertilized by manure from feedlot cattle.
For wild animals, this would only be a concern if they lived downstream from a feedlot or were otherwise exposed to feces from feedlot cattle. But for a roadkill animal, if the intestines have been ruptured and fecal matter has touched edible meat, you might discard that part of the meat, because there can be intestinal parasites in fecal matter, although washing and then cooking at high heat should really be enough to get rid of them.
Salmonella is normally not in the intestines of mammals at all. If a mammal swallows Salmonella, the mammal will get sick (but usually gets over it in a few days – again, this is not an uncommon situation for mammalian bodies to deal with). Salmonella does normally live in bird intestines, and because of the crowding and feces in the air, etc, salmonella can be inhaled by chickens or get into their food, and thus can get into their meat and even eggs.
Again, this would not be an issue with wild animals, especially mammals.
Also, both of these bacteria are killed by heat. (Only 165 F will kill them.)
Nevertheless, there are other bacteria around, so I always eat raw garlic whenever eating anything questionable. Ever since (many many years ago) I once ate some venison that was flat-out spoiled and the resulting severe intestinal cramps and diarrhea were gone in half an hour with raw garlic … Garlic is an important ally and guardian if you live without refrigeration, as I do.
